Northeastern’s coolest co-​​ops, from Fenway Park to the Ecuadorian Amazon

North­eastern senior Takuo Urushi­hara hit a home run with his co-​​op for the Boston Red Sox, scoring top prize in the University’s Coolest Co-​​op video competition.

As part of Northeastern’s co-​​op cen­ten­nial cel­e­bra­tion, the Office of Stu­dent Affairs had asked under­grad­u­ates to make a short video show­casing why their job was cooler than any other expe­ri­en­tial learning oppor­tu­nity in North­eastern co-​​op history.

Urushihara’s videoon his co-​​op as a pro­duc­tion assis­tant with the Red Sox topped those of dozens of other stu­dents who sub­mitted entries. A team of fac­ulty and staff mem­bers judged the clips, awarding cash prizes to the top three finishers.

Senior busi­ness major Alexandra Avila and senior inter­na­tional affairs and Spanish double major Michaela D’Amico won the second and third prizes, respectively.

Urushi­hara, a com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the­ater double major, called his co-​​op with the Red Sox “unbe­liev­able” and “some­thing I could not expe­ri­ence any­where else.”

He started working in the media con­trol room at his­toric Fenway Park in 2007 and the orga­ni­za­tion named him Employee of the Season after the 2008 cam­paign. Urushi­hara still works at baseball’s oldest park through a pro­gram offered by Northeastern’s Inter­na­tional Stu­dent & Scholar Institute.

He con­trols all of the content—from player stats and replays to blooper reels and high­lights packages—that appears on the park’s center field video board on game day. And he helps edit and shoot player videos and orga­nize pre-​​game ceremonies.

Doing an inter­na­tional co-​​op in one country wasn’t enough for Avila, whose expe­ri­ence at the Guggen­heim museums in Venice, Italy, and Bilbao, Spain, com­pelled her to explore a career in museum management.

The second-​​place prizewinner led museum tours, guarded art­work, worked in the ticket office and used her flu­ency in Italian and Spanish to help out in the gift shop between August and December of 2009.

Avila said her pre­vious co-​​ops at Travel and Leisure Mag­a­zine and at JG Black Book of Travel gave her a leg up on her competition.

“I was doing this pro­gram with art his­tory stu­dents and I was the one stu­dent who was asked to stay on longer because this wasn’t my first job,” she said.

She quickly became immersed in a major envi­ron­mental dam­ages law­suit, working with lawyers and mem­bers of the press team for the Amazon Defense Coali­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion that leads a $27 bil­lion law­suit against Chevron Texaco for ille­gally dumping toxic waste in the Amazon.

Advancing human rights and fighting for the envi­ron­ment are near and dear to her, she said. “The work has made me want to do more on human rights and envi­ron­mental causes that affect cul­tures and groups who lose their land,” D’Amico said.

To watch the top three coolest co-​​op videos, please click on the fol­lowing links:

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